In depth discussion

The sections below are geared towards those looking to understand the essence of a talent and any interactions it may add to the spec. If you are just looking for a quick suggestion with no explanation, see the above TL;DR recommendations.

Quite a simple talent to understand, EotE just adds a charge to Lava Burst. At face value this may not seem impactful, but once you consider that effects which reset the cooldown on Lava Burst will now instead grant a charge, the benefits are clear. Echo adds value by allowing extra time for you to cast instead of needing to cast it immediately when it comes off cooldown. This is because you’ll lose no DPS by choosing to cast another spell while Lava Burst has less than 2 charges, as the second charge “cooling down” does not translate to wasted DPS. This makes this talent helpful for any kind of movement compared to the other two.

This is a relatively short CD (12 sec) that grants a random secondary stat buff (Critical Strike, Haste, or Mastery) for 10 seconds. It should be used on cooldown, and you should not behave differently based on which buff you get – just treat it as a passive increase.

This functions like Legion’s legendary boots, The Deceiver’s Blood Pact. When you cast Earthquake or Earth Shock, you have a chance to immediately refund all the Maelstrom spent. This allows for increased burst AoE/ST but with the caveat that at a 25% chance, it is quite random and can’t be reliably used for burst damage.

A set of stationary buffing totems which provide small but effective bonuses while within their 40 yard range. Ideally you want to use this every 2 minutes, or whenever you’re forced to move out of the buff radius.

A fairly powerful talent that should be considered mostly for its defensive value, not the movement increase it provides. Spirit Wolf is quite potent for predictable damage intake when you have the freedom to spend a few seconds in Ghost Wolf, and when Astral Shift is on cooldown.

An underwhelming talent that offers little value and requires additional GCDs throughout the fight. We do not recommend using this talent, but if you do decide to, ensure you do not refresh the stacks early. It is not important to stay at high stacks, and is a waste of a GCD to refresh.

Raid utility that requires a bit of experience to place properly. The movement speed buff radius is unclear, but with some practise and proper raid positioning it should not be an issue. (Rejoice! Wind Rush Totem got an effect radius animation on 8.1 PTR. Soon…!)

Earth Elemental - gains Harden Skin, a damage reduction cooldown that grants *both the Shaman and the Earth Elemental a 40% damage reduction buff for 10 seconds. Despite this being on a one minute cooldown, it is effectively a 5 minute cooldown as the Earth Elemental can only cast it once in its lifetime. Also gains Pulverize, a decent single target stun on a long CD -- usable twice in the Earth Elemental's lifetime. Lastly, gains Angered Earth, a toggleable AOE taunt. We recommend turning this off auto-cast unless you are looking to use Earth Elemental for its aggro purposes.

Since the removal of the Maelstrom cost from Frost Shock in Patch 8.0, Icefury has become much less complex to manage. This is to be used on cooldown assuming you can cast all four empowered Frost Shocks. The Maelstrom cost removal from Frost Shock gives you a bit more liberty in when you can use Icefury charges, potentially for brief moments in the 15 second buff window where you will move for a few GCDs.

An interesting buff that creates some swing in the spec, a tangible speeding up and slowing down of casts provided you’re lucky with Mastery: Elemental Overload procs. This is especially noticeable in AOE with High Voltage, where you can regularly get in excess of 15 stacks for a total of 30%+ haste for a few seconds.

A copy of the artifact ability from Legion with a few major changes. The first is that it no longer increases the damage done by the Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning casts it empowers. The second difference is the reduction from three stacks of the Stormkeeper buff to two. This is primarily useful for burst AOE, such as in Mythic+ dungeons, but is a far cry from its original state in Legion.

A potent cooldown with a few requirements for its use. First, you must ensure you refresh Flame Shock before casting Ascendance as the reduced duration of Flame Shock in BFA would likely require you to refresh it during Ascendance. Second, you want to get high value out of Ascendance with high (optimally 100%) uptime of casts during the buff. You should adjust your casts during Ascendance as per the priority list page.

Notable talent synergies

Please note that this list will only include talent synergies with easy to explain, intuitive reasoning behind them. There may exist some mild synergies not in this list, but we have chosen to not write about them here. Many factors affect which talents benefit others, so we have narrowed it down to synergies with direct impacts on gameplay.